Want to know what your typical day in Barcelona might be like? Read about
Sarah’s day!
“I start the day in typical Spanish fashion: with a breakfast of Cola-Cao and tostadas. After telling my host mom my plans for the day, I get ready for my morning at El Casal. As I leave the apartment, my mom wishes me a good day: “Qué te vaya bien!” I walk a couple of blocks to my bus stop and hop on a bus filled with men and women on their way to work and children on their way to school. Today, I’ve reached El Casal early, so I can check my email, read the paper and chat with John and Inés and the other students before heading to my Spanish language class at 9:45. Today, we’re listening to popular Spanish music and analyzing some newspaper articles, as well as tackling some pretty advanced grammar topics. Silvia always leaves us time to chat, though, and today the topics have ranged from our host families to current events. Spanish is followed by a break and everyone makes a beeline for the café downstairs. We’ve got a half hour to down some café con leche and a croissant before heading back upstairs, where Inés greets us with “¡Chicos! ¡A clase!” and we settle into her art history seminar. Today’s topic is the modernista architect, Antoni Gaudí and Inés wants to have us well-prepared for the next day’s field trip. When the seminars are over, I go to lunch with some of the other Casal kids. We enjoy a typically relaxing meal of two or three courses, lingering at the table for an hour or so. After lunch, we all head off to our volunteer activities and internships. Today, I’m going to teach English to first- and second-graders at a local elementary school. I have a little time between my teaching and field hockey practice this evening, so I go home to relax for a bit. The girls on the field hockey team are great and we talk about everything, not just our next game. Between drills, I even quiz a friend who has a test on irregular English verbs the next day! Dinner follows field hockey…at around 10 p.m.! That’s also the time to watch the news on TV---I’ve got to be up-to-speed for John’s Contemporary Society and Politics seminar, after all! It’s been a long day, but I manage to get in a little reading before drifting off to sleep”.
Now, read about Blair’s wacky life and times in Barcelona!
First of all, it is an experience in itself to wake up in Barcelona. If you are a suburban kid like me, the morning sounds of a city, especially a vibrant, cosmopolitan, Mediterranean city like this one, are something new. The last BCNeta garbage trucks finishing up a long night of scrubbing away signs of the tireless nightlife, someone blasting Shakira a few floors upstairs, a Catalán morning radio show, the general hustle and bustle of millions of people getting ready for another day….all the sounds remind the El Casal students what they are waking up to – a day in one of the most amazing cities you’re likely to find.
And it just gets clearer on the walk to morning classes. It’s a casual stroll along streets planned by a utopian socialist who had communal space and healthy light exposure in mind, streets planted with a surprising number of old trees and walked by an unbelievable number of fashionably shod feet. They are streets and corners you’ll come to know and love. You’ll stroll past modernist buildings with wrought iron balconies and huge iron, wood, and glass doors leading to painted foyers, past that café where, later today, you’ll have a relaxed three course menú del día and past another where, unbelievably, a paint crew is having a cerveza at 8:45 in the morning, getting an early start to the daily cycle of caffeine and alcohol. Because this is the city where coffee can be cheaper than water and wine is included in every meal.
Balmes 163 will come to feel like a second home. And how could it not? This is where your surrogate parents, John and Inés, live and work. No matter how independent you are ready to be, it is invaluable to have people looking out for your best interest, ready to give advice about everything from guitar lessons to perspective on life, and it doesn’t hurt if those people happen to be warm, knowledgeable, and interested in what you are doing together. Because not only are you learning about Spanish culture in its linguistic, political, and artistic dimensions, but you are learning what it means to fit into that culture and navigate through a city which is marked by those themes right down to its Roman foundations.
But one of the best parts about El Casal is that it is much more than a cultural study program. Through both the internships and the homestays, each Casaler is given the opportunity to actively participate in the modern Barcelonan culture. So along with greater knowledge of Catalán Romanesque architecture, Almodóvar films, and the present subjunctive, each student brings away memories of unforgettable relationships. I spent many of my afternoons volunteering at a cerebral palsy center. All the afternoons I walked with Mabel, the 20-something afflicted with this condition, all the dinners--including the one I cut up and spooned to Carlos as the only guest on his 33rd birthday--and all the smiles I learned to interpret from María Angeles mean that those are people I will never, ever, forget.
And the homestay, oh the homestay! Who would have thought that an 18-year old Ohio girl would end up living with two slightly crazy older women in their quirky apartment full of good cooking smells every night (along with sounds of Spanish “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”), the occasional four-hour poker game, and the knitting lessons (because, yes, I did learn how to knit) to the soundtrack of Tom Jones, Leonard Cohen, and Frank Sinatra? Or that that same gap-year-girl would have such a blast and would end up learning more about being an independent woman/ experimental eater/ adaptable house mate from those two Catalanas who took me under their substantial wings than I ever expected to learn from any two people, especially in only four months?
There is no way to understand a day in the life of and El Casal student until you experience one yourself. Every day, from the busy morning to long lazy afternoon, from voluntariado to dinner with the host family, from that drum party in the street to the latest Barça soccer news, will be different from every other.
